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Monday, 18 May 2015

CPEC- A Timeline of Changing Positions of the Government

CPEC- A Timeline of Changing Positions of the Government

Over the last few months a huge debate generated on social, print & electronic media over the alleged changes to the original route of Pak-China Economic Corridor (CPEC). However, it got more intense during the recent visit of Chinese President where Pakistan & China signed a $ 45.6 billion MoU for Chinese investment in CPEC.Almost all political partiesstarted their protests against PML-N government both inside and outside parliament over the changes in the original route. ANP & PPP did separate All Parties Conferences to build a consensus against any changes to the original route. There were some protests too in the two smaller provinces against the alleged changes in CPEC route.The ruling PML-N government and its ministers’ response to these criticism is ambiguous, at best. These lines will try to give a brief time line of official response to the allegations of changes in the CPEC route.

Probably the very first response from Governmenton the alleged changes in CPEC route camein June, 2014 in a meeting of Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenuewhen some opposition senators question the proposed changes in the original route,. Responding to a question, Secretary Planning & Development confirmed that “the proposal (to change the route) was on the table’ on request by Chinese Ambassador. Later, Mr Ahsan Iqbal joined the meeting and confirmed a change of plan on the corridor project. Mr Iqbal said ‘the government choose the eastern route (going through Punjab & Sindh) over the western route (going through KP & Balochistan) because it has some of the Early Harvest Projects (EHPs) which can be completed in 4-5 years’.The minister argues that “the government would move to the next phase after reaping economic benefits of the first phase and by the time the national economy would become strong enough to take on big projects”. He further asked the opposition “to find out investors for constructing this important corridor on BOT (build-operate-transfer) basis and then there will be no change in the original plan (western route).”

In another meeting on 10th October, 2014 of a Senate’s Standing Committee on Communications, members from the smaller provinces reject exclusion of backward areas of Balochistan & KP from the Pak-China Corridor Route.Chairman Senate Standing Committee, Daud Khan Achakzai, complain that their earlier recommendations were not entertained by the government. The members of the committee expressed annoyance over the absence of the minister of state for communications from the meeting.

In yet another meeting of the Senate Committee on foreign affairs on 5th February, 2015, NHA chairman told members of the committee that "Whatever we have done is with the consent of the Chinese authorities who told us that instead of waiting (for the original route), the existing road network could be used for making Gwadar port operational at the earliest." To which Senator Farhatullah Babar remarked that ‘once the the new alignment becomes operational it will, overtime, create its own vested interests and it will be impossible to revert to the initially planned alignment via D.I Khan and D.G Khan. Thus for all practical purposes the new alignment will become final and irrevocable. The senator further said that ‘the decision about the economic corridor’s alignment is fundamentally a political decision and has to be addressed at a political level; stating that it cannot be addressed by bureaucrats attending today’s meeting.’

Despite tremendous pressure on the current government from political parties, print, electronic and social media to come clear on the CPEC route change, the response of PML-N government is ambiguous at best. Their changing positions about the route(s) of CPEC and not sharing detail information about this important project with political parties and general public cast doubts about their intentions.